page_title: Allan Graham
section_title: Influences
hierarchical_section_title: Allan Graham / Influences
caption_attribution_description: English: Taken during the taping of Add-Verse in Maine 2004, by Gloria Graham.
context_page_description: Allan Graham, who sometimes uses the name Toadhouse, was a contemporary American artist based in New Mexico. His work included sculpture, painting, poetry, and video.
  Graham studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and San Jose State University before moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico.
  His early paintings were wall-like grids which, in the mid to late 1970s, developed into more open compositions with sweeping arcs and herring-bone patterns.
  In 1983, he abandoned conventionally shaped canvases in favor of eccentric forms and began leaving the stretcher bars exposed. By the mid-1980s this had evolved into a series of painting-sculpture hybrids, using wood, canvas, newspaper and book pages, which resembled certain African works. These were followed by near-monochromes on bent canvasses, sculptures made of books and irregularly circular paintings using book pages from sources such as a Navajo Bible and Dante's Inferno.
  In the 1990s, he painted a series called "Cave of Generation", which consisted of steps leading into large monochrome and two-tone paintings.
context_section_description: Graham has been influenced by Zen Buddhism and Buddhist poetry. A large installation piece titled Time is Memory, which appeared in SITE Santa Fe, included sixteen zafus in front of which were placed famous Buddhist death poems. He has also cited Robert Creeley as an influence. The latter was also part of a video, poetry, photo installation project called “Add-Verse” which he did in conjunction with artist Gloria Graham, his spouse.
caption: Allan Graham and Robert Creeley, during the taping of "Add-Verse", 2004, photo by Gloria Graham
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